One day a farmer was working hard in his fields and decided to take a short break. He closed his eyes and felt the warm sun on his skin and inhaled the lush smells of the greenery. Suddenly, he was startled out of this serene moment by what sounded like a rock whizzing by his head. And then another. The next one stung him as it slammed right into the side of his head, drawing blood. As he whipped around around in a rage he saw 3 young boys from the village at the edge of the main field all frantically throwing rocks at him.

Imagine you are the farmer.

What do you do?

Do you yell at the boys? Throw rocks back at them? Run away? Try to reason with them? No matter what you do, the rocks keep coming.

Our farmer decides to run at the boys and scare them off. He waits for a lull in the incoming fire and dashes as fast as he can towards the boys. He doesn’t notice it at first, but something unexpected happens. The boys are not lowering their aim to hit him as he approaches. Instead, they continue to hurl rocks, over his head, toward the place where he was standing just a moment ago. Also, when he reaches the edge of the field, the boys aren’t scared of him. Actually, they barely acknowledge him at all other than to point their hands towards the location where he was standing. They seem to be yelling something, but the farmer can’t make out the words as they continue to hurl rocks at the place he used to be.

Finally, the puzzled farmer turns so he is side by side with the boys and facing in the same direction as them. To his surprise, he sees a herd of wild buffalo, approaching from the direction of where he was just standing, heading towards the field the boys are standing in front of. This field feeds the entire village and if it were to be trampled, many villagers could starve.